As WEBSTER sits
reading the LA. Times, MCBRIDE walks in
and tells in
how his SISTER came
to Hollywood eleven months ago
to make her fortune, and to meet the stars.
Of how he'd heard from friends that she'd "gone strange".
Imagining the needle, or far worse,
he travels out to Hollywood himself
and finds her standing underneath a bridge.
Her skin is pale. She screams at him "Get lost!"
and sobs and runs. A TALL MAN DRESSED IN BLACK
grabs hold his sleeve, tells him to let it drop
"Forget your sister," but of course he can't…
(IN SEPIA
we see the two as teens,
a YOUNG MCBRIDE and SISTER way back when,
giggles beneath the porch, "I'll show you mine,"
closer perhaps than siblings ought to be…
to watch a passing butterfly.
We hear them breathe and fumble in the dark:
IN CLOSE-UP now he spurts into her hand,
she licks her palm: first makes a face, then smiles…
HOLD on her lips and teeth and on her tongue.)
Webster says he'll take the case,
says something flip and hard about LA,
like how it eats young girls and spits them out,
and takes a hundred dollars on account.
THREE NAKED WOMEN dance for dollar bills
Webster comes in, and talks to one of them,
slips her a twenty, shows a photograph,
the stripper-standing close enough that he
could touch her (but they've bouncers on patrol
wired steroid cases who will break your wrists)
admits she thinks she knows the girl he means.
Then Webster leaves.
A video awaits him at his home.
It shows A WOMAN lovelier than life
Shot from the ribcage up (Tier breasts exposed)
Advising him to let this whole thing drop,
forget it," promising she'll see him
soon…
INT. McBride'S HOTEL ROOM. NIGHT.
McBride's alone and lying on the bed,
He's watching soft-core porn on pay-per-view
Naked. He rubs his cock with Vaseline,
lazy and slow, he doesn't want to come.
A BANG upon the window. He sits up,
flaccid and scared (he's on the second floor)
and opens up the window of his room.
HIS SISTER enters, looking almost dead,
implores him to forget her. He says no.
The sister shambles over to the door.
A WOMAN DRESSED IN BLACK waits in the hall.
Brunette in leather, kinky as all hell,
who steps over the threshold with a smile.
And they have sex.
The sister stands alone.
She watches as the Brunette takes McBride
(her skin's necrotic blue. She's fully dressed).
The Brunette gestures curtly with her hand,
Off come the sister's clothes. She looks a mess:
her skin's all scarred and scored; one nipple's gone.
She takes her gloves off and we see her hands:
her fingers look like ribs, or chicken wings,
well-chewed, and rescued from a garbage can-
dry bones with scraps of flesh and cartilage.
She puts her fingers in the Brunette's mouth…
THE PHONE RINGS. It's McBride. "Just drop the case.
I've found my sister, and I'm going home.
You've got five hundred dollars, and my thanks."
PULL BACK on Webster, puzzled and confused.
MONTAGE of WEBSTER here. A week goes by,
we see him eating, pissing, drinking, drunk.
We watch him throw HIS GIRLFRIEND out of bed.
We see him play the video again…
The VIDEO GIRL stares at him and says
she'll see him soon. "I promise, Webster, soon."
Pale people stand like cattle in a pen.
We see McBride. The flesh is off his chest.
White meat is good. We're looking through his ribs:
his heart is still. His lungs, however, breathe,
inflate, deflate. And tears of pus run down
his sunken cheeks. He pisses in the muck.
It doesn't steam. He wishes he were dead.
A DREAM:
As Webster tosses in his bed
He sees McBride, a corpse beneath a bridge,
all INTERCUT with lots of shots of food,
to make our theme explicit: this is art.
WEBSTER'S become obsessed.
He has to find the woman from the screen.
He beats somebody up, fucks someone else,
fixated on "I'll see you, Webster, soon".
He's thrown in prison. And they come for him
THE MAN IN BLACK attending THE BRUNETTE,
Open his cell with keys, escort him out,
and leave the prison building. Through a door.
They walk him to the car park. They go down,
below the car park, deep beneath the town,
past shadowed writhing things that suck and hiss
and glossy things that laugh, and things that scream.
Now other feeder-folk are walking past…
They handcuff Webster to A TINY MAN
who's covered with vaginas and with teeth,
and escorts Webster to